Welcome and Attend them all - 2024
String Orchestra
Duration: ca. 3’10”
This piece, roughly grade 2.5 - 3, gives secondary orchestras a chance to practice listening to each section in the ensemble, sharing melodies and counter melodies throughout the work. The title refers to a line in Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” that states:
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all!
(Translated by Coleman Barks)
water in motion - 2020
Symphonic Orchestra
Duration: ca. 6’
This work is an imagining of the course of the Cache la Poudre river over a 24 hour period. It is an arrangement of Water in Motion, originally written for violin, cello and piano, and recorded by Trio Casals on Navona Records. This arrangement will be recorded by the Symphony Orchestra at Stephen F. Austin State University soon.
Reading session by:
Stephen F. Austin State University Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by: Oliver Yan
Cinematography & video editing by: Tommy Laird
jes: a year in the life - 2018
String Ensemble
Duration: ca. 7’
This piece was inspired by the events that a close friend lived through over the course of a calendar year (eg. the death of a parent).
Performed by:
Annie Daulton (violin), David Drassal (violin), Erika Fiebig (cello), Rose Gear (bass), & Eddie Nicholson (viola)
midnight in budapest - 2015
String Orchestra
Duration: ca. 5’20”
This piece was written for secondary school orchestra. Its folksy rhythms and dance-like melodies are a nod to Béla Bartók and his prolific work with folk tunes.
Reading session by:
Stephen F. Austin State University Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by: Dr. Greg Grabowski
A Year in Denver - 2015
Symphonic Orchestra
Duration: ca. 21’
This multi-movement work came from five separate interviews that I conducted with five separate friends regarding the past year of their lives. Each movement conveys ideas that came from those interviews. The first deals with change and uncertainty, the second with loss in a plethora of forms (death, loneliness, etc.). The third movement comes from relational tension between a newly married husband and wife, while the fourth portrays a newly divorced man coming to health after an abusive marriage. The last movement is a meditation on reinventing oneself.
Header photo by Caleb Young